Experts say restricting our eating window to an eight-hour period improved blood glucose control and could could boost all round health
Having a late breakfast and an early evening meal cuts our risk of Type 2 diabetes, new research suggests.
Restricting our eating window to an eight-hour period improved blood glucose control in adults at risk of developing the condition. Researchers were able to confirm this was not due to people eating less in total, but because of the extended hours of the day when they were not eating.
This longer break between periods when the body is busy digesting food is thought to help a number of metabolic functions and boost healthy gut bacteria. It comes as there is a growing trend towards periods of fasting to boost health.
Lead author Dr Kelly Bowden Davies, of Manchester Metropolitan University, said: “Many people find counting calories hard to stick to in the long term, but our study suggests that watching the clock may offer a simple way to improve blood sugar control in people at risk of type 2 diabetes. This warrants investigation in larger studies and over the longer term.”
The new study is the first to show that it does not matter whether that eating window was early, between 8am and 4pm, or late, between 12pm and 8pm. The trail enrolled 15 people and controlled what they ate to ensure any benefit discovered was not due to participants consuming less food. They were each allocated a “eucaloric” diet matched to their energy requirements and taking into account sex, age, weight, height and activity levels.
Continuous glucose monitoring showed that in comparison to “habitual eating” spread over 14 hours a day, those eating in an eight-hour window increased their time spent within the normal blood glucose range by on average 3.3%. They also had reduced markers of glycaemic variability – fluctuations in blood glucose levels – by 2.6%. The benefits started to be seen after three days of time restricted eating (TRE).
Dr Bowden Davies said: “Our study found that restricting eating to a window of eight hours per day significantly improved the daily time spent in the normal blood glucose range and reduced fluctuations in blood glucose levels. This can be attributed to the 16-hour fasting window rather than the time of eating or changes in energy intake. Although time-restricted eating is becoming increasingly popular, no other studies have examined tightly controlled diet and altered the clock time of an eight-hour eating window on glycaemic control in people at risk of type 2 diabetes.”
The findings are presented at the annual meeting of The European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD) in Madrid.
